Premier League tactical trends 2024-25: Goalkeeper long passes, inswinging corners and fast breaks

New York Times

3 days ago

It feels a lifetime ago that Arne Slot spoke about the importance of winning duels after Liverpool won away 2-0 to Ipswich Town on the opening day of the season.
Nine months, 379 matches and 1,113 goals later — the second-most in a Premier League season behind 2023-24 — Slot's Liverpool have waltzed to the title, the promoted trio are relegated for the second consecutive season, and Nottingham Forest are the first team to double their points tally from one Premier League campaign to another.
It was also a season packed with tactical intrigue. Let's dive into the trends from 2024-25.
Nothing encapsulates the specificity of roles in Pep Guardiola's Manchester City team better than the goalkeeper, Ederson, and striker Erling Haaland, ending the season with the same number of assists (four).
When teams press City man-for-man, the distance-kicking qualities of their goalkeeper are essential. Guardiola described it as 'a weapon that we have to exploit' earlier in the season.
An important part is how short and slow City play so often in build-up, luring teams on to them and only — as Ahmed Walid wrote earlier this season — playing long passes in-behind when it is practical.
The overall trend of goalkeepers launching (kicking 40+ yards) in open-play continues to drop, now down to 43 per cent. It is a less steep drop (four per cent) than between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (seven per cent) and, for context, Ligue 1 and Bundesliga goalkeepers play even shorter.
Opta's data on launched goal-kicks dates back to 2017-18, and in this time frame, after six years of a steady downward trend, it is the first time that launch rates in those scenarios have plateaued — at one in three, which makes for a suitable tactical blueprint: play short twice, and when the opponents step up to press at the third goal-kick, play over them.
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There were nine goalkeeper assists in 2024-25, the most in any Premier League campaign. Mark Flekken (Brentford), Jordan Pickford (Everton), Bernd Leno (Fulham), Bart Verbruggen (Brighton & Hove Albion), and Ederson all set up goals.
Ederson was particularly effective at going in-behind when opponents locked on man-for-man but failed to apply pressure to the ball. This gave him time and space to be on the ball outside his box and pick a pass.
It happened to Newcastle for the opening goal when they went to the Etihad in February.
Here, Haaland and winger Savinho make opposite movements to manipulate Newcastle's man-marking.
The No 9 drops in, taking Dan Burn away from Savinho as he runs in-behind. Kieran Trippier misjudges Ederson's pass, leaving the Brazil international alone to lob Martin Dubravka.
The same happened to Brentford when they squeezed high at the Etihad, man-for-man, but did not press Ederson.
This time, the goalkeeper played into the other channel as Kristoffer Ajer and Nathan Collins locked on to City midfielders.
Haaland arced his run into space. His marker, Ethan Pinnock, misjudged the flight as he tried to block the Norwegian, who took two touches to control the ball and set himself before chipping past Flekken.
City's fourth goal in their 5-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace was another example.
Palace do not press man-for-man here, sitting in a 5-3-2 (but double-marking City's two pivots with their own midfielders and No 9s) with an aggressively positioned back five.
James McAtee arcs his run along the defensive line, away from wing-back Tyrick Mitchell, kept onside by the far-side defenders.
He misses when he tries to control Ederson's dropping long pass, and the pace takes him past Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson, who rushes out — he taps into an empty net.
Bournemouth caught the eye this term — earning a club-record points total — with an intense out-of-possession style. They encapsulated just how physical the division has become. Data provider SkillCorner, who extract contextual metrics from broadcast tracking data, have measured the year-on-year increase in sprint distance in Premier League matches since 2018-19.
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Comparing 2024-25 with six seasons ago, overall running distance is up just over six per cent, players are sprinting 19 per cent more often and 22 per cent further. This is fundamental to implement the pressing schemes that have become typical in the league.
Though, after four years of them increasing season-on-season, the number of final-third regains has actually dropped, down to its lowest rate since 2020-21. That statistic could be linked to increasing physical intensity, with teams needing more (and longer) recovery sprints when opponents are playing over or through them.
Andoni Iraola's Bournemouth were the best pressing team for final-third regains per match (5.7). For context in the rest of the league dropping off, there were five sides last season who made more.
Teams adopted the 'if you can't beat them, join them' perspective after multiple seasons of Arsenal and Aston Villa enjoying success from inswinging corners.
That corner type had accounted for 45-50 per cent of all deliveries in the previous five years. Recent seasons, though, have seen outswingers and straight balls steadily decline.
Nottingham Forest were the only team to take more outswinging than inswinging corners in 2024-25. That outlier approach worked as they were one of only four teams to score 10+ corner goals, and ranked second for corners per goal (scoring once every 16 deliveries).
In total, 2,341 inswinging corners were taken, which accounted for over 60 per cent of all corners — a higher total and proportion than any season since 2018-19. From the right, one in three corners targeted the six-yard box, with almost half of all left-side deliveries being dropped on to the goalkeeper.
Curling inswingers for big centre-backs to attack is a throwback as corner tactics go, particularly in an era of set-piece coaches, though having specialists in this department ought to have contributed more on the defensive side.
A combined league total of 135 goals from corners is the lowest for four years, with total xG from these scenarios and corners per goal (a measurement of efficiency) also at four-year lows — it is a drop of 36 corner goals with teams on average scoring once every 29 corners, five more than last season.
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There were defensive improvements across the board, as last term City and Fulham were the only teams to concede fewer than six goals from corners, and in 2024-25, nine different sides conceded five or fewer.
A simple but key reason may have been the absences of quality takers, with injuries limiting minutes for Bukayo Saka (Arsenal) and Kevin De Bruyne (City), while James Ward-Prowse (Nottingham Forest then West Ham) and Kieran Trippier (Newcastle) struggled for game time, and Brighton's Pascal Gross left last summer.
The Premier League can now take the title from the Bundesliga: statistically, it is the most counter-attacking of Europe's major leagues.
England's top tier had been trending in this direction anyway, with the past three years seeing the number of fast-break shots rise from 226 in 2020-21 to 392 last term, while the past two seasons featured over 80 fast-break goals — a threshold that was not broken between 2018-19 and 2021-22.
A different level of counter-attacking was reached in 2024-25 with 513 fast-break shots and 112 goals from those situations.
Liverpool and Mohamed Salah led the way, with 52 shots and 14 goals (22 and seven for Salah) from fast breaks being the best numbers by a team in any Premier League season in the past seven years — the frequency at which they went ahead in games allowed Liverpool to maximise the counter-attacking tactics that get the best of out Salah.
Every team scored at least twice from fast breaks, which owes to the rise of quick, individualistic wingers and forwards spread across the division, plus the extent to which most teams want organised possession in the opposition half — that increases transition opportunities.
A special mention for Ipswich Town's Liam Delap here, who accounted for 47 per cent of their fast-break shots in 2024-25, and scored four of their six goals from these scenarios. That accounted for one-third of his 12 goals in his breakout season, as the No 9 was able to maximise his running power and ball-carrying quality.
The Premier League's middle-class rose this season, with all the teams between fifth (Newcastle) and 11th (Fulham) in the Championship as recently as 2017. Their attacking success in 2024-25 owed, for plenty of that pack, to attacking partnerships.
Newcastle's Jacob Murphy provided No 9 Alexander Isak with plenty of cutbacks and low crosses from the right. Being a right-footer on his natural side 'brings a whole different dynamic,' he said in an interview with The Athletic last week.
Savinho to Haaland and Anthony Elanga to Chris Wood were other winger-to-striker combinations that proved fruitful — the Sweden international has set Wood up 10 times since the start of last term, including four instances this campaign.
Aston Villa (Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers) and Crystal Palace (Eberechi Eze and Jean-Philippe Mateta) both had success with No 10s playing off strikers.
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Brentford's fluid strike partnership of Yoane Wissa (19 goals, converted from winger to striker) and Bryan Mbeumo (20) was one of the finest in the division, combining for 29 chances and six goals.
All in, there were 14 instances of one player assisting another 4+ times in the Premier League in 2024-25, more than any campaign since 2017-18 (16 instances).